Category: blog

More Trav

But I could not get into it. I am apart. Always I have seen around me all the games and parades of life and have always envied the players and the marchers. I watch the cards they play and feel in my belly the hollowness as the big drums go by, and I smile and shrug and say, Who needs games? Who wants parades? The world seems to be masses of smiling people who hug each other and sway back and forth in front of a fire and sing old songs and laugh into each other’s faces, all truth and trust. And I kneel at the edge of the woods, too far to feel the heat of the fire. Everything seems to come to me in some kind of secondhand way which I cannot describe. Am I not meat and tears, bone and fears, just as they? Yet when the most deeply touched, I seem, too often, to respond with smirk or sneer, another page in my immense catalog of remorses. I seem forever on the edge of expressing the inexpressible, touching what has never been touched, but I cannot reach through the veil of apartness. I am living without being truly alive. I can love without loving. When I am in the midst of friends, when there is laughter, closeness, empathy, warmth, sometimes I can look at myself from a little way off and think that they do not really know who is with them there, what strangeness is there beside them, trying to be something else.
 
Once, just deep enough into the cup to be articulate about subjective things, I tried to tell Meyer all this. I shall never forget the strange expression on his face. “But we are all like that!” he said. “That’s the way it is. For everyone in the world. Didn’t you know?”
 
from The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald, 1973

An earlier post on Travis McGee here.
 

Short stories

Kelley:

Recently I have been reading a short story book by Jeffrey Deaver called “Twisted Stories.” Reading the book, and comparing it to similar books I have read by Stephen King and Dean Koontz, leads me to one question I have about short stories.

I like to think I am good at reading character, in people in general. So my question is can a good writer, reverse that type of process, and give a reader a good solid character in a short story?

It’s especially obvious in Deaver’s book that characters take a back seat to get a good shock by the ending. Surely you can manage a short story while still giving your character some depth if movies can do it, it’s a very similar format in pacing and length. Thoughts?

I absolutely believe that three-dimensional, emotionally true characters are possible in short fiction. I would have to put a fork through my forehead if I didn’t (grin), since those are the kinds of stories I try to write.

I agree with you about Deaver and many, many other writers of short fiction, particularly in crime/thriller genres. I’ve read very few short stories in those genres that paid much attention to character. In those stories, the point is the twist at the end, the shock (the big reveal, they call it in screenwriting). Some science fiction is like that too, although much more SF these days tries to focus the “cool idea” through the lens of character. Some people are more successful than others.

And some writers just don’t do short stories very well.

And some writers believe short stories are not to be taken as seriously as longer ones, which makes me exceedingly grumpy. There’s a school of thought that says novels are “better” than short stories because they are longer, more complex, require more carefully blended layers. Et cetera. I think it is certainly true that novels are more work than short stories; they take longer to conceive and longer to write. What pisses me off is the assumption that doing more work automatically makes a work more worthy, and therefore short fiction is automatically lightweight not just in word count, but in intrinsic value. Stories certainly can be lightweight, sure — you’re reading some right now. But they can also be luscious and dense and have as much layering, pound for pound, as a novel; and to create compelling character in 5,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 words is neither an easy nor a less worthy thing to do.

Not sure I agree with you about Stephen King. I think he’s a master of character. There’s no one who does a particular American voice and manner like he does, and with such obvious love for his characters, even the real shitheels. I love his work. If you’re not finding enough character in the shorter stories to interest you, then I highly recommend any of his novella collections (writing as either Stephen King or Richard Bachman): Different Seasons (amazing stuff, including Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and The Body), Four Past Midnight, and The Bachman Books, which are actually short novels but rip along so fast they feel like novellas.

I’d love to hear anyone’s recommendations for short fiction with great characters. Let’s talk.

—–

And if anyone wants to start a different conversation, just use this link (or the Talk to me here link on the sidebar). It may take me a little time, but I will respond — I love these conversations.

—–

Edited to add: Jocelyn just turned me on to the short review “where short story collections step into the spotlight.” A brief wander through the site already tells me that there are plenty of collections out there dealing with character-based fiction…. so let’s all go find something good to read.

Also check out their blog.

Travis McGee and me

I’m currently re-reading some of my favorite books — the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald.

Here’s a writer I wish I’d had a chance to know. Not “meet.” Meeting isn’t good enough. I’m greedy, I look for connection and relationship with artists whose work I admire, which is why I’ll wait in line for 12 hours to be in the front row of a U2 show, but I won’t hang out for 20 minutes at the stage door hoping that Bono will autograph the back of my hand so that I can squeak Ooh, I’ll never wash it again! (and please, girls, ick, the last tour was over 2 years ago…go wash those hands!). That’s not the kind of relationship I want, the fan yearning for connection and the artist wondering if there’s any roast beef left in the green room.

I love the artists that I love — writers, musicians, actors. They take me places no one else does, sometimes places I’ve longed to go but couldn’t find by myself. They have changed me, shaken me up, rocked my world, made me think, made me cry, made me dance, given me moments of the most piercing joy — but I don’t think they are better people than I am, and I don’t worship.

But I do like to talk (grin), and that’s the relationship I would love to have with my favorite artists — the long evening of food and drink and conversation, the time to roam around inside each other’s heads. To share stories. To connect over how amazing it is to be alive in a culture that has time for art, that makes a space for it.

I think I would have liked MacDonald. He writes smart and funny and deep. He makes small moments big. He tells a great story, And he likes to riff in his writing the way I do, to just go off…

I went out into the bright beautiful October day and walked slowly and thoughtfully back toward midtown. It was just past noon and the offices were beginning to flood the streets with a warm hurrying flow of girls. A burly man, in more of a hurry than I was, bumped into me and thrust me into a tall girl. They both whirled and snarled at me.
 
New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We’re nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won’t snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each other’s throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down.
 
from Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald, 1964

MacDonald does that kind of thing all the time — Travis takes a moment to ruminate on some aspect of life, the universe and everything, and then just goes on about his day. He’s a smart, complex man engaged with his world and yet very separate from it. A thoughtful man, a man of sex and violence, a man who sits still for sunsets and notices the small beauties of the world. A man who wanders through his own interior swamps and doesn’t always like what he finds, but owns it anyway.

The series was written from the early 60’s to the early 80’s, and the early books have the occasional dash of a particular, casual racism, sexism and homophobia that were characteristic of that time in this country. (The racism, sexism and homophobia now are different, it seems to me, in terms of expression at least). I don’t like it, but it doesn’t spoil the books for me. I no longer need purity in my favorite books; I’m not pure either, you know? These days I need emotional truth and growth and the feeling of recognition in both the joys and sorrows.

I wish I had a Travis in my real life. (Although I think it’s arguable that my imaginative life, the life inside my body and mind and heart that only I know, is just as real to me as the outside stuff…) But I wish there was a Travis in both, the way I wish for an Aud and a Crichton and a Morgon.

And there’s all those real live people whose work I so enjoy, that moves me so. People to know someday. I have hope.

Who do you wish for?

Sweeney Todd…

…absolutely rocks.

I fell in love with the play in the 80’s. I’m not a huge fan of what I think of as typical Broadway musicals or Broadway singing — if I hear one more orange-haired moppet belt out “Tomorrow” in a size 20 voice, I will absolutely run screaming from the room. But Sweeney Todd worked because the songs work as story, not just as vehicles for voice.

And now we have Tim Burton and his vision for Sweeney, and it’s fantastic. Dark, sophisticated, visceral in a way that is both cartoonish and gut-churning (seriously, when the first guy lands on the pavement, I just about lost my popcorn…). This is a streamlined Sweeney, and it’s a naturalistic one. Many of the talented cast don’t have trained voices, and the ones who do are forgoing Broadway-belt-it-out in favor of showing us who and where they are, and why. Telling us a story of themselves, or giving us a window into themselves at a moment of crisis. I love this naturalistic approach to music. I’d much rather watch an actor sell a song than simply sing it to the back row.

In particular, I think the duets benefit from this approach, as well as from the intimacy of the camera. If songs are story, then duets are relationship, and these are so nuanced and compelling… great stuff. A grownup movie with strong performances and all the grand guignol that Sweeney Todd demands.

*****

And while we’re at it, I am so so so so excited about this. Heath Ledger is going to be amazing, I can just tell.

God, I love the movies.

22 January

Edited to add: And now he’ll never be amazing in anything again. God damn it, anyway.

Gemæcca

Nicola has a new blog dedicated to the new novel she’s writing, set in 7th-century Britain. I’ve read the first 12,000 words and it’s amazing stuff — lucid, lush, exciting, full of drama and stuffed to the ceiling with detail of places, culture, beliefs, customs, right down to the way it feels to walk into a king’s feast hall…

Want a window into the process? Here it is.

Addio 2007

2007 started hard, in sadness and worry, and in some ways it stayed hard. Some disappointments, some hopes dead and others deferred. But those aren’t the biggest kind of hard: I didn’t lose my home, my partner, my mind or my life. So perhaps it’s better to think of it as a learning year. (Oh goody, another learning experience. As a wise lad named Calvin once said, I feel smarter already.)

Well… I’m not sure I’m smarter, but a little wiser about some things. Maybe a little more of a grownup.

A lot of 2007 has been trudge-trudge-trudge a little further down the road of adulthood — Lookee here, missus! Responsibility! Fewer easy answers! Sucking it up! Come get some of this wacky adult fun before we run out…. But in spite of that, okay, fine, maybe because of it, I feel better, more clear, younger than I used to. I’m a little less likely to just take people’s bullshit, and I’m also a little more likely to let the small stuff slide, which can turn into a pretty interesting moment of choice when someone’s bullshit is about the small stuff.

I feel a little more free.

And so that makes this hard year a good year.

Every New Year’s Eve, Nicola and I buy the best bottle of champagne we can afford (which varies pretty spectacularly sometimes, but this year is lovely — Alfred Gratien Mill&#233sime 1997). We prepare a meal (prepare is a relative term that includes everything from cooking five courses to running out for Indian takeaway, and by the way Indian food is great with champagne). We eat and drink and talk about the year that’s ending and the year ahead. We don’t make resolutions, we make dreams and visions and goals.

One of mine, this time last year, was to feel more like a writer. Not just to have written, but to be more rigorous and more honest. To dig deeper, be more brave. To work harder. And to write things even if I know I can’t, even if I know I’m not good enough or honest enough or brave enough. To suck it up and do it again.

And so I did. In 2007 I wrote a screenplay and a novella that make me fizz — both of them more quickly, more rigorously, than I have written in ages, in spite of the sadness and worry and various fucking grownup responsibilities. It’s the year I started a (second, original) screenplay with an opening scene that makes me wiggle, it’s so cool. The year I came up with a master plan for conquering Hollywood. The year a real live editor asked me to write a young adult novel, and I began to find young people in my head with some things to do and say, some big feelings to feel, some life to live. It’s the year I taught Clarion West and was privileged to work with an amazing group of writers: I think I helped a few of them, and I know they helped me. 2007 is the year I gave myself back to writing, and now I feel like a writer again. Who knew it could be so easy (huge laughter here….).

This year I started going dancing again. I reconnected with old friends. Nicola published her amazing memoir and began writing an even more amazing novel (more about it on her myspace blog). And she began some other stuff that I feel unexpectedly deeply hopeful about, but it’s her stuff so that’s all I’m saying about it, except that it’s both hard and good to feel hope.

This hard year has been a good year. I’m grateful to it, and I’m glad to see it go. Addio, 2007. In 2008, I look forward to hopes realized, dreams lived, hard work, good times, and doing more than I think I can. Bring it on.

My very best to you for whatever you want from the new year. May it come to you in joy.

More best

Nicola and I talk about our favorites of 2007 over at Colleen Mondor’s Chasing Ray.

If you’re interested in adult and young adult books, you’ll find an ongoing fascinating conversation at Chasing Ray. Colleen’s interests seem limitless, and she offers readers a constant cornucopia of good stuff — books, interviews, musings on writing and reading. I enjoy Chasing Ray and am delighted to be in the favorites gang this year.

Here’s Nicola’s take on 2007.

And here’s mine.

Giving it up in ’07

It’s my turn to talk on the Aqueduct blog about my favorite books, movies, tv and music of 2007. It turned out to be less of a list and more of a rant, or maybe a riff…

If anyone has suggestions for the kind of text I’m looking for, let me know — I’d be grateful. Or we can talk about what you’re looking for in text right now. Use the comment form below, or start your own conversation (the link takes you to a form where you can submit a question or comment about… well, anything. As soon as I can, I’ll respond and post both your question and my response to the blog).

EW thinks @U2 rocks!

Entertainment Weekly has just published its list of the 25 Essential Fan Sites of 2007, and I’m totally jazzed that @U2, the U2 fan website I write for, is #4. We are the highest-rated music website on the list. Congratulations to the amazing @U2 staff. I’m proud to be among you.

If you’re interested, you can read my @U2 articles here. But don’t stop there — stay at @U2 for great interviews, essays, news reports, album and concert reviews, and more.

@U2 is special not just for its content, but for the quality of the writing, the wonderful sense of teamwork among the staff, and the great leadership of our founder and editor, Matt McGee. I’ve said before that Matt is one of two or three people on the planet that I’d actually consider working for in a real job… and I’m pretty picky these days.

And Matt’s writing a very cool book!

Waiting in the GA line to see U2
My total fangirl goobiness is revealed.
I waited in this line for 12 hours to see U2 in Seattle in 2005. And once inside, I got supremely lucky and ended up in the front row, 8 feet from the band. There is nothing like seeing the music being made, nothing like it. It was a beautiful night.